Catepillar fungus

Caterpillar fungus is highly valued in Chinese medicine and used as crude drugs to restore energy, promote longevity and stimulate the immune system.

Bee larva

Giant grilled spiders

Two Cambodian women selling grilled spiders in Phnom Penh's central market, 09 August 2001 try to attract customers as one of them display a specimen to a passer by. Grilled insects such as those big spiders are very popular with Cambodians who eat them as snack any time during the day.

Duck fetus

Cooked just before the embryo was old enough to crack through the shell.

Poop coffee

This photo shows a villager in Indonesian island of Sumatra picking up faeces, which will then be used to make expensive and gourmet coffee called "kopi luwak

Dogs

A Chinese chef prepares to carve a carcass of a dog at a restaurant kitchen in Beijing.

Grubs

A Thai worker prepares grubs to cook.

Snake blood

A journalist tries to drink snake blood on a jungle survival program during a media training exercise June 9, 2003 at Sanggabuana mountain in Subang, West Java, Indonesia.

Fried scorpions

Rats

In this village where people eat rats, there are a dozen of rats hunters like this man and each day they sell their catch for about one dollar per kilogram.

Snake wine

A waitress pours a favorite Chinese wine, soaked with various herbs and snakes, into a glass for a customer at a restaurant in Beijing.

Grasshopper taco

Florentino Azpetia, chef at Girasoles restaurant in Mexico City, prepares a grasshopper taco (taco de chapulines), a typical Mexican delicacy, in the restaurant's kitchen 19 October 2001. Maggots (gusanos del maguey), grasshoppers (chapulines) and white ant eggs (escamoles) form part of a Mexican specialty cuisine which features over 500 edible insects and bugs.

Maggots

Fried lizard

An array of once-wriggling reptiles and arachnids is on the menu of a new Thai restaurant seeking to cash in on the country's appetite for the unusual, the owner of the restaurant said the reptiles served up by his 'experienced chefs' were also prominent ingredients in traditional Thai medicines.

Worms

A woman looks at a dish of worms during the Taipei Chinese Food Festival.